Unit 2 · Topic 2.2

2.2 Appeals: reaching an audience's emotions, values and trust

Appeals are the ways writers give an audience reasons to accept an argument: by connecting to their emotions and values, by giving them logic and evidence, and by earning their trust. You may know them as pathos, logos and ethos, but the exam rewards explaining what a choice does for the audience, not just naming the appeal.

Key terms

appeal
ethos
pathos
logos
credibility

What an appeal is

An appeal is a way of reaching an audience so that they'll accept an argument or act on it. Writers appeal to what the audience feels, what they value, how they reason, and whom they trust. Most strong texts use several appeals at once.

The classical labels

Label	Reaches the audience through	Often looks like
Ethos	Trust in the writer's character, knowledge or fairness	Credentials, shared identity, fair treatment of opponents, careful tone
Pathos	Emotions and deeply held values	Vivid stories, charged words, images of suffering or hope, appeals to pride or fear
Logos	Reasoning and evidence	Statistics, cause-and-effect chains, if-then logic, examples, comparisons

Naming isn't analyzing

Here's a sentence that earns almost nothing on an essay: "Stanton uses ethos and pathos to persuade her audience." It names labels but says nothing about this text, this audience or this purpose.

Here's a sentence that does the work: "By copying the Declaration of Independence's famous opening, Stanton dresses a radical demand in the most respected language in America, which makes rejecting her claim feel like rejecting the nation's founding ideals." It names a specific choice, explains how it reaches the audience, and ties it to the purpose. Notice it doesn't need the Greek words at all.

Use the labels as a private checklist while you read, if they help. In your writing, describe the move and its effect.

Appeals overlap

One choice can do several jobs. A soldier's letter quoted in a speech can stir emotion, lend authority and serve as evidence at the same time. Don't force a choice into a single box. Ask what it does, and you'll often find two or three effects worth explaining.

Which appeals fit which situation

Writers lean on different appeals depending on the rhetorical situation. A skeptical audience of experts usually wants careful reasoning and a writer who seems fair and informed; heavy emotion may make them suspicious. A friendly crowd at a rally may respond most to shared values and stirring images. A writer the audience doesn't know, or doesn't yet trust, often has to build credibility first, by showing knowledge, admitting limits or naming common ground, before any other appeal can land.

So when you analyze an appeal, connect it to the situation: why this appeal, for this audience, at this moment?

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Analyzing an appeal without label-dropping
At the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848, women's rights activists adopted a Declaration of Sentiments, written mainly by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It begins with a familiar sentence, slightly changed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Explain how this choice appeals to the audience.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Identify the choice: Stanton copies the Declaration of Independence almost word for word, adding "and women."
2. Step 2: Identify the audience: Americans in 1848 who revered the Declaration, many of whom opposed women's rights.
3. Step 3: Ask what the copying does. It borrows the Declaration's authority (trust), stirs patriotic pride (values and emotion), and sets up a logical trap: if readers accept the original, they must explain why women are left out (reasoning).
4. Step 4: Write the analysis around the effect, not the labels.
Answer: Model paragraph: Stanton's opening borrows the most respected sentence in American politics and changes it by only two words, "and women." Because her audience treated the Declaration of Independence as close to sacred, the echo makes her demand sound less like a radical break and more like the completion of a promise the nation had already made. The small addition also traps opponents: to reject Stanton's sentence, they would have to explain why the founders' logic applies to men alone, a position that sits uneasily with the patriotism they claim.

Common mistakes

Writing "the author uses pathos" with no explanation of what the choice does for this audience.
Assuming pathos just means making readers sad. Emotional appeals can stir pride, anger, fear, hope or guilt.
Treating logos as only numbers. Reasoning, analogies and cause-and-effect chains appeal to logic too.
Forcing every choice into exactly one appeal when it clearly does several jobs.

On the exam

Reading questions usually ask what a choice does, such as "establishes the speaker's credibility" or "evokes sympathy for," rather than asking for the Greek label. Practice describing effects in plain words.
In Question 2, the scoring guidelines reward explaining how choices work, not identifying devices. A paragraph that names three appeals without explanation stays at the low end of Row B.

Connected topics

Videos

How to Write about Rhetorical Appeals | Logos, Ethos, and Pathos | Coach Hall Writes
Coach Hall WritesWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
AP English Language: Introduction to Rhetorical Appeals
Marco LearningWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
How to use rhetoric to get what you want - Camille A. Langston
TED-EdWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
*IMPROVED* How to Write About Ethos, Pathos, & Logos (The BEST Way)!
Garden of EnglishWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Rhetorical devices and appeals | Reading | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Ethos, Pathos & Logos
tamuwritingcenterWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

3 questions on 2.2 Appeals: reaching an audience's emotions, values and trust. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it,—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war,—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, delivered at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 1865, in the final weeks of the Civil War, before a crowd that included officials, soldiers and ordinary citizens. Lincoln had been reelected; the Union was close to victory.

Question 1 of 3

The image of "every drop of blood drawn with the lash" being "paid by another drawn with the sword" (paragraph 3) appeals to the audience mainly by

Question 2 of 3

The final paragraph, which begins "With malice toward none, with charity for all," appeals to listeners' values mainly by

One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbour, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits . . . were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. . . . In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Booker T. Washington, a formerly enslaved educator who led Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, speech at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, September 18, 1895, as printed in his autobiography Up from Slavery (1901). The audience was mostly white Southerners, with Black listeners seated separately, and newspapers across the country reported the speech. Some text is omitted between paragraphs 1 and 2 and between paragraphs 2 and 3, and ellipses mark omitted text within paragraph 3.

Question 3 of 3

In paragraph 3, the description of Black Southerners who "tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities" appeals mainly to the white audience's

0 of 3 answered